Friday, 28 July 2017

A Package for Taylor Arithmetic

In the last blog post I wrote about what was left to do with implementing support for N-dimensional arrays in the interval package. There are still some things to do but I have had, and most likely will have, some time to work on other things. Before the summer I started to work on a proof of concept implementation of Taylor arithmetic in Octave and this week I have continued to work on that. This blog post will be about that.

A Short Introduction to Taylor Arithmetic

Taylor arithmetic is a way to calculate with truncated Taylor expansions of functions. The main benefit is that it can be used to calculate derivatives of arbitrary order.

Taylor expansion or Taylor series (I will use these words interchangeably) are well known and from Wikipedia we have: The Taylor series of real or complex valued function $f(x)$ that is infinitely differentiable at a real or complex number $a$ is the power series
$$
f(a) + \frac{f'(a)}{1!}(x-a) + \frac{f''(a)}{2!}(x-a)^2 + \frac{f'''(a)}{3!}(x-a)^3 + ....
$$
From the definition it is clear that if we happen to know the coefficients of the Taylor series of $f$ at the point $a$ we can also calculate all derivatives of $f$ at that point by simply multiplying a coefficient with the corresponding factorial.

The simplest example of Taylor arithmetic is addition of two Taylor series. If $f$ has the Taylor series $\sum_{n=0}^\infty (f)_n (x-a)^n$ and $g$ the Taylor series $\sum_{n=0}^\infty (g)_n (x-a)^n$ then $f + g$ will have the Taylor series
$$
\sum_{n=0}^\infty (f + g)_n (x-a)^n = \sum_{n=0}^\infty ((f)_n + (g)_n)(x-a)^n$
$$
If we instead consider the product, $fg$, we get
$$
\sum_{n=0}^\infty (fg)_n (x-a)^n = \sum_{n=0}^\infty \left(\sum_{i=0}^n (f)_n(g)_n\right)(x-a)^n.
$$

With a bit of work you can find similar formulas for other standard functions. For example the coefficients, $(e^f)_n$, of the Taylor expansion of $\exp(f)$ is given by $(e^f)_0 = e^{(f)_0}$ and for $n > 0$
$$
(e^f)_n = \frac{1}{n}\sum_{i=0}^{n-1}(k-j)(e^f)_i(f)_{n-i}.
$$

When doing the computations on a computer we consider truncated Taylor series, we choose an order and keep only coefficients up to that order. There is also nothing that stops us from using intervals as coefficients, this allows us to get rigorous enclosures of derivatives of functions.

For a more complete introduction to Taylor arithmetic in conjunction with interval arithmetic see [1] which was my first encounter to it. For another implementation of it in code take a look at [2].

Current Implementation Status

When I started to write on the package, before summer, my main goal was to get something working quickly. Thus I implemented the basic functions needed to do some kind of Taylor arithmetic, a constructor, some help functions and a few functions like $\exp$ and $\sin$.

This last week I have focused on implementing the basic utility functions, for example $size$, and rewriting the constructor. In the process I think I have broken the arithmetic functions, I will fix them later.

Creating a Package

My goal is to create a full package for Taylor arithmetic along with some functions making use of it. The most important step is of course to create a working implementation but there are other things to consider as well. I have a few things I have not completely understood about it. Depending on how much time I have next week I will try to read a bit more about it probably ask some questions on the mailing list. Here are at least some of the things I have been thinking about

Mercurial vs Git?

I have understood that most of the Octave forge packages uses Mercurial for version control. I was not familiar with Mercurial before so the natural choice for me was to use Git. Now I feel I could switch to Mercurial if needed but I would like to know the potential benefits better, I'm still new to Mercurial so I don't have the full picture. One benefit is of course that it is easier if most packages use the same system, but other than that?

How much work is it?

If I were to manage a package for Taylor arithmetic how much work is it? This summer I have been working full time with Octave so I have had lots of time but this will of course not always be the case. I know it takes time if I want to continue to improve the package, but how much, and what, continuous work is there?

What is needed besides the implementation?

From what I have understood there are a couple of things that should be included in a package besides the actual m-files. For example a Makefile for creating the release, an INDEX-file and a CITATION-file. I should probably also include some kind of documentation, especially since Taylor arithmetic is not that well known. Is there anything else I need to think about?

What is the process to get a package approved?

If I were to apply (whatever that means) for the package to go to Octave forge what is the process for that? What is required before it can be approved and what is required after it is approved?